Privacy Camp 2019

The 7th annual Privacy Camp will take place just before the start of the CPDP conference. Privacy Camp brings together civil society, policy-makers and academia to discuss existing and looming problems for human rights in the digital environment.

Privacy Camp 2019 will focus on digital platforms, their societal impact and political significance. Due to the rise of a few powerful companies such as Uber, Facebook, Amazon or Google, the term “platform” has moved beyond its initial computational meaning of technological architecture and has come to be understood as a socio-cultural phenomenon. Platforms are said to facilitate and shape human interactions, thus becoming important economic and political actors. While the companies offering platform services are increasingly the target of regulative action, they are also considered as allies of national and supranational institutions in enforcing policies voluntarily and gauging political interest and support. Digital platforms employ business models that rely on the collection of large amounts of data and the use of advanced algorithms, which raise concerns about their surveillance potential and their impact on political events. Increasingly rooted in the daily life of many individuals, platforms monetise social interactions and turn to questionable labor practices. Many sectors and social practices are being “platformised”, from public health to security, from news to entertainment services. Lately, some scholars have conceptualised this phenomenon as “platform capitalism” or “platform society”.

Privacy Camp 2019 will unpack the implications of “platformisation” for the socio-political fabric, human rights and policy making. In particular, how does the platform logic shape our experiences and the world we live in? How do institutional actors attempt to regulate platforms? In what ways do the affordances and constraints of platforms shape how people share and make use of their data?